”A Novice Manager’s Tale of Woe”

This story is about a small town accounting girl (Tricia Monet), who was from a very large close-knit family in Illinois. Her fiancés job was transferring them to Sioux City, Iowa. So she did a little soul seeking and thought this would be a good time to try something new in her career. She had a bachelor’s degree in accounting but was tired of crunching numbers. She decided she wanted to interact with people face to face, instead of hanging in an office behind a desk. So the move was a great time to see what else might be out there.
She saw an ad in the Sioux City newspaper for an assistant director position at Personal Reflection. Personal Reflections, was a national chain of personal care and household products. She applied, was offered the job within two hours, and accepted the position within the next two days. She attended a two-week training class within the next few weeks after accepting the position. The company seemed great, people were nice and benefits were great but she noticed after that training class Personal Reflection provided little information or assistance to their directors.
When Tricia started Heather Munson was the store director, and at that time there was only two assistant directors, and 30 part-time employees. Personal Reflection ranked their stores based on sales. There were four levels, stores with the largest volume would be ranked a 1, the Sioux City store was ranked a 3. Ms. Munson resented that the district manager did not allow for her to have a decision on the hiring of Tricia. Tricia always felt like she was being interrogated by her boss. The store was a mess, so Tricia decided to try and organize and straighten it up, Ms. Munson was not appreciative of that and yelled at her. During this time one of the other assistant directors gave her two week notice, and Tricia would go home and make comments about giving her notice as well. Within days Munson announced she would be out for a while on disability due to back problems. Tricia stepped up and acted as the store director with only a month under her belt, she accepted the challenge with excitement. During the next few months the district manager was in the process of hiring assistant managers (Amy, Lori and Tammy) and they also announced that Tricia would become the new store director.
All was good they worked great as a team, some were stronger than others and Tricia noticed their strengths and weaknesses and paired, or aligned them with stuff that pushed them. All was good until the day that she mentioned she was considering maybe going back to school and then the aggression in the work place began.
Finding of Fact # 1:
You have three assistants that all have a little different back ground; their motivational techniques are different from each other. And they learn and comprehend at a different speed. Lori caught on fast, could do the paperwork and hardly ever made mistakes. Amy was easy to get along with and hardly ever made mistakes as well. Tammy was more resistant to learning and trying new things and struggled with the paperwork and made mistakes. Tammy was the weakest and did not follow policies like sharing what they made with each other.

Recommendation #1:
I suggest that Tricia follow the Contingent Reinforcement Model (Hellriegel 135).
Tricia and Tammy need to set a goal ----- Does the employee achieve the goal? ----- If no than Tricia has a choice of staying silent or reprimanding…. First time you might stay silent, second time I would reprimand and document in Tammy’s file.---- If yes you compliment employee on accomplishment.
With employees you should be able to set goals and if they meet the requirement than reward them, if they do not then there should be consequences for their actions. Positive reinforcements help to motivate employees that might not usually be motivated. You might provide a gift certificate for meeting a goal for that month. Or you might take the employee out for lunch one day for meeting a daily goal that was set. Employees will react to negative or positive reinforcement and in some cases both might be needed. When Tammy decided to share her wage, even though she knew she should not have. She should have been spoken too and reminded that stuff like that is confidential, and if it was to happen again that she will be written up. This way she has been given the warning and knows there might be consequences the next time. And as an adult she can make the decision as to abide to the rules or not.
As for personal experiences with this finding of fact and recommendation, I would say that we all have experienced this in our jobs. Sharing what you make in any working environment just causes problems. You are going to have an employee that you don’t feel pulls their weight, misses’ work all the time and might make a little less than you do. I see this all the time in our manufacturing department. The guys are bad about sharing what they make which just causes animosity at work and personality conflicts. Some people might be worth what they make but others may not be. Find of Fact # 2:
I would say the personality was another issue at Personal Reflections. In any working environment not everyone is going to have the same personality, so you have to figure out the best way to handle it and what works best for those involved. As leaders you can’t change a person’s personality but you can attempt to change their behaviors.
Recommendation # 2: As we saw with the assistants you had Amy who had an agreeableness personality, she was able to get along with everyone. Lori seemed to me to have both the emotional stability personality; which is the degree of calmness, security as well as conscientiousness personality; which is concerned with self-discipline, acting responsibly and directing behavior. As for Tammy I didn’t see any of those listed on page 80, except for maybe her openness of not listening to rules and not being very motivated. So, how should Tricia handle these three? First she needs to be aware of the different personalities’. Lori and Tammy were more competitive against each other, so to avoid their personality clashing I would suggest not having those two work together. Since Amy got along with everyone she would be one that you could pair up with either, and be able to get the same stuff done. They all three valued their job satisfaction, just worked at achieving it in different manners. I do believe that Tricia was lucky to have the organizational commitment from all three assistants, she just needed to keep them focused and motivated.
As for a personal relation to this topic in our department there are four of us. Jay, Danny, Candi and myself. For the most part we usually work pretty well as a team. If one of us is behind we will ask the other to help. The one gentleman is always known for being behind and Candi and I will ask to help him and he always says no. But then I will hear him make comments to the boss, “Well I’m behind, I’m trying to catch up”. He never stays late to work to get caught up but will make negative comments and blaming others as to why he is behind. Sometimes his emotions will explode at work, and if he would be more open with us we could help get him out of his hole. I believe firmly in team work, when you have that you can succeed at anything, sometimes you have to put those personanility conflicts to the side.
Find of Fact # 3:
At the end when Tricia mentions going back to school you see the emotions of the three assistants change, you notice stress amongst all of them. As well as a little work aggression.
Recommendation # 3:
As the manager Tricia needs to pull a meeting together and explain to them that she is just thinking about going back to school, not leaving the company. As we saw in chapter 12 you can have dysfunction within a team. Since Tammy took it upon herself to contact the district manager concerning Tricia’s position even though nothing had been mentioned about leaving. She has opened a door for aggression amongst the team and to me is a bad apple amongst the group. Bad apples bring a negative concept to the table and that just disrupts team work. During this time of announcements she has also lost the absence of trust. They are now not for sure what her true goals for the future are, they are unsecure where they stand as a team now. There is no longer communication amongst each other, and a lot of back stabbing going on. As I mentioned before first she needs to call a meeting and clarify her exact plans. She then needs to clarify the norms which are rules and patterns of behavior that will be accepted and expected by the members. (Hellriegel 371). She will then need to make sure to enforce and conform to these norms. You will have those that are cohesive and non-cohesive. Those that are not should be reprimanded.
As for my personal experience I have seen people within departments get wind that someone might be leaving, or moving to another department. It’s amazing how people can become such busy bees and start conniving behind their bosses back, or even other employees on how they can get that position. Some of the most evilest individuals come out in times like this. It’s sad how a person can act like your best friend and turn on you in the next moment. This is exactly what happened to Tricia and now she will either need to start all over with assistants, or set guidelines of what will and will not be accepted.

Work cited
Hellriegel , Slocum, “Organizational Behavior” “Organizational Behavior.13th.ed. Cengage Learning. 2011.